False Surrender
by Right What Is Wrong
Summary: Oneshot. The Star Forge is destroyed and the Republic rejoices. Jedi always were fools. Dark!Revan, Dark!Bastila.


**Author's Note: **Not quite the canon KOTOR ending, here...

Left Revan's gender unspecified. (Canon vaguely implies that, in KOTOR-era, "Sith Lord" and "Master" were gender-neutral titles. )

* * *

_"...the redemption of Revan, the prodigal knight."_

Oh, that little vermin had no idea just _how_ prodigal. Bastila was grateful her resting expression had always been disdainful. How had she ever revered this fool as a Master?

For that alone, she had to be grateful to Malak, long might he rot in the Netherworlds of the Force. He had opened her eyes to the truth of reality: the emptiness of Jedi philosophy, and the vastness of Sith power. Where all the reasoning and experience in the world would have failed to make a mark on her Jedi arrogance, he had shattered it with naked pain.

As repayment, her Master had graciously shattered his illusions of invincibility in equal measure.

She glanced over, making a great effort to keep the reverence out of her eyes. If any showed, she hoped it might be excused as her gratitude towards her _redeemer_. Oh, how Jedi loved to believe their own rot...

In fairness, she had fallen for it too. She had honestly believed, at the Rakatan Temple, that the great Revan had been wholly subsumed by the false persona. Once her dearest hope, it had then only filled her with disgust. The Sith warlord who had rebelled against the weak, cowardly Jedi and broken the back of the undefeated Mandalorians, then collected on the debt the Republic owed its savior by force... reduced to nothing more than the Jedi's puppet, something so weak and mindless that it could not even rebel with the knowledge of its degradation thrown in its face. A subhuman shell. Without remorse had she done her best to euthanize those remains, then fled when even her newfound Sith powers proved incapable of repelling three foes at once.

Not until she had confronted the seeming shell on the Star Forge had she realized this was not the _former_ Revan. Crushed to the deck by the Force, she could barely breathe as her vanquisher calmly explained the concept of _deception_ in wartime. Then she had been given a choice: obedience or death. It was more than she deserved.

She had bent the knee without hesitation. Well - she had needed to get up from the floor first. But that had been a trifling detail. When she knew the power she had tasted briefly as a callow Jedi had not been extinguished by Malak's treachery and the Jedi's trickery, the choice was made for her. She could not have refused.

Perhaps she could not have refused even as a Jedi. It was so easy to vow to resist all temptation before one had ever known true temptation. And it was so easy to resist... once. Twice. A dozen times.

It was when the number blurred and the times between faded, leaving one continuous horror with neither beginning nor end nor hope of salvation, that souls broke.

Not that it mattered. Her soul had already been broken, so it had only taken once.

And it would only take a little more for the Republic. The Jedi were stupid and in love with their own lie. Having held fast against all foes, they now clasped a serpent to their bosom. After all, their puppet had destroyed the Star Forge for them - what tainted soul could refuse such power?

A tainted soul that could look beyond the bait. The Star Forge, masterwork of the Builders of the Infinite Empire - the same Builders who had been reduced to Forceless feuding savages upon a backwater under its baleful gaze. The Star Forge, secret to Darth Revan's power - the same Darth Revan who had been cast down to grub in the dirt, a puppet denied even the knowledge of the Force. The Star Forge, Darth Malak's ultimate weapon - the same Darth Malak who would shortly have it proved, with utmost brutality, that he had never been anything more than a pretender to the power of the Dark Side, dying beneath the boots of the Master he had left for dead.

The Star Forge powered its miracles by gorging itself on sentient lives. It had been naked foolishness to think its masters were exempt.

Thus the fatal folly of the Rakatan Empire had been explosively decommissioned. And the fatal folly of the Republic turned and waved to the cheering crowds, modest expression betraying nothing of what lay within.

Bastila caught Revan's eye, and it took all her discipline to suppress the shiver that went through her at the golden gleam in the _reformed_ Jedi's eyes.

Treachery was the way of the Sith.


End file.
